By CHRISTOPHER BODEEN,
Associated Press Writer
LHASA – Basang has never laid eyes on a train — unless you count the ones he’s seen in movies or on the old television shows that feed his curiosity about the world beyond the Tibetan plateau.
Now the Lhasa native is a worker on one of the most ambitious railway projects ever undertaken — a 708-mile push through jagged peaks and frozen plateaus to connect Tibet’s capital with the Chinese interior.
China says the project, begun in 2001, will bring unprecedented economic development and opportunity for the long-isolated Himalayan region. Critics fear a wave of migrants from interior China that will swamp the native Tibetan population, eroding Buddhist culture and further marginalizing them.
For Basang, 22, however, it’s just a job — albeit one that earns him considerably more than the majority of Tibetans, who remain largely herders and farmers, could hope to earn.
“This project will bring economic development, especially tourism,” said Basang, who uses no surname following traditional Tibetan practice. And the negative impact? “I don’t know of any,” he said.
As he spoke, Basang stood beside one of the railroad’s key projects, a 3,000-feet-long bridge that will span the Lhasa River at the terminus of the line.
Surrounded by clouded peaks, the river courses under an iron support structure while massive rolling cranes painted with slogans such as “Build a first-class high plateau railway” stand ready to drop steel tracks in place.
China is sinking almost $3 billion into the line, due for completion in July 2005, adding to the billions of dollars it has already pumped into Tibet, one of the poorest and least developed regions in China.
Besides the economic boost, the railway also stands to strengthen China’s political control over the often restive region, which Communist armed forces occupied in 1951, but which many Tibetans say was never an integral part of China.
On the line, all sections are under construction and technical difficulties abound. The air is so thin in some areas — 560 miles of the track will run at over 13,200 feet — that workers must wear oxygen masks and train cars will have to be pressurized.
More than 334 miles will run over frozen soil that can shift the track as it thaws during the daytime, forcing engineers to devise techniques to keep the ground temperature constant.
Impact on the fragile Himalayan environment is also a concern — one that builders say they are taking steps to minimize. Measures reportedly include cuttings to allow animals such as the endangered Tibetan antelope to pass under tracks.
The track builders also claim to be ensuring employment opportunities for native Tibetans, although the vast majority of workers are from the interior. Tibetans make up only about 6,000 of the 38,000 workers on the line, though their wages — around $180 a month — are equal to the annual incomes of many rural Tibetans.
At the Lhasa River bridge, all but 60 of the 800 workers come from engineering companies in central China. Engineer Zhou Yousheng, from the city of Wuhan, typifies sentiments among them: He says the line will bring prosperity to Tibet.
“Economic development is crucial for social stability. Besides, we’re all Chinese and we ought to do our utmost to help our Tibetan compatriots,” says Zhou, smiling under his red hard hat.
Despite fears among critics, many of them in the Tibetan community overseas, Tibetans in the throes of an unprecedented boom fed by billions of dollars in development funds from inland China don’t seem too concerned with potential negatives associated with the line. However, tight political controls and heavy penalties for subversive talk make many reluctant to express negative opinions.
“We want more people to come, because that’s going to speed up development. We want railways constructed to all towns in Tibet,” said Bachu, a T-shirt vendor in the market surrounding Lhasa’s Jokhang Temple.
Though railway constructors haven’t said anything about extending the line, they claim to be sensitive to local concerns, even going so far as to incorporate Tibetan themes into the Lhasa River bridge.
Its pylons, they claim, will take the shape of a yak’s legs, while the three arches represent traditional Tibetan silk scarves and the Potala, the famed Tibetan Buddhist palace in Lhasa.
